Éric Verdeil

Michel Ecochard in Lebanon and Syria (1956–1968). The spread of Modernism, the building of the independent states and the rise of local professionals of planning

The architect and planner Michel Ecochard has had a long career in developing countries, from its first works in Syria under the French rule, until the 1970s. He represented the modernist and functionalist approach to planning in a time of modernization. In this article, we concentrate on his work in Lebanon and Syria between the end of the 1950s and the 1960s. He prepared the master plans of Beirut and of Damascus. Those works represented the end of an era rooted in colonial planning. It was also the beginning of a new time, with the local planners taking on, sometimes sharing, sometimes contesting Ecochards visions. Building on recent scholarship on the circulation of planning ideas, we focus on the reception of Ecochards proposals. Though most political elites and planning professionals shared most of Ecochards views, the political circumstances and the changing social conditions led to adjustments and reorientations. The new planning framework was also a major factor of change.

The Contested Energy Future of Amman, Jordan: Between Promises of Alternative Energies and a Nuclear Venture

Metropolitan authorities and local business elites are often seen as major players in the energy transition in the city. Such energy transitions are mostly conceived of as low carbon technologies, which permit the retrofitting of urban infrastructure and the rebundling of metabolic circuits. This article contests these views by highlighting the major role of non-urban energy sector institutions and actors. By examining the connections between technology, space and energy politics, and by using a relational understanding of the urban, this article explores the case of Amman’s energy transition. The growth of consumption coupled with new energy practices face a problematic supply because of shifts in regional geopolitics. This situation has prompted energy transition policies, among which are a green growth programme and the building of a nuclear power plant at the edge of the city. The article analyses the socio-political assemblages that shape those policies and unravels the competing interests at stake. It demonstrates the political and highly unruly nature of energy transitions.

The spatialities of energy transition processes

This chapter explores the role of spatiality and how it is constructed in energy transition processes. Space is part of different operations for channelling, assessing and controlling material flows to turn them into energy resources and ensure a predictable production. The chapter proposes the idea of a ‘politics of volumes’ to describe how an energy volume is calculated, delineated and controlled, how sharing it and living together within it is made possible, and how it is (re)configured when being connected to a pre-existing large socio-technical assemblage (such as an electrical grid). These explorations offer new insights about the strategic combinations of energy and non-energy volumes, the influence of social and spatial heritage in the making of energy volumes and the power relationships at work.

Planning Histories in the Arab World

Over the past century and a half, most accounts of cities of the Arab world have viewed them through the lens of an organically built urban fabric, understood as an Islamic heritage, an expression of a collective and religious ethos (Bianca 2000). Planning, as a professionally conceived endeavor aiming at structuring changes in cities, was perceived as almost nonexistent in this world region. When scholars have attempted to circumvent the narrative of chaos that imbued urban history here as in much of the developing world, they have usually highlighted external political and economic determinations, and pointed out the divergent pathways of Arab cities between (neo)colonialism, socialism, aid-dependency, or the oil economy rather than specific urban management styles (Abu-Lughod 1984). However, recent scholarship (primarily in French and English, as relevant work in Arabic is relatively sparse), based on case-studies dealing mostly with the principal cities in the region, has shown that extensive planning over many decades has marked cities across the Arab world, from cutting arteries through existing built fabric to laying out infrastructure and neighborhoods at the urban edge. This scholarship has identified some unifying trends, including the model of spectacular urbanism that emerged from the Gulf region thanks to the circuits of oil money and the rise of a new political order, spreading to the rest of the region and beyond (Elsheshtawy 2008). Drawing on this historiography, this chapter proposes five threads that posit planning as a central, but contested, practice in the making of Arab cities, without oversimplifying the Arab world as a monolithic geographical entity. 1) Planning, state building, and elite affirmation. Planning has long been recognized as a tool of power, helping to build new states—from colonial entities to post-independence countries (Sanyal 2005). In the Arab world as elsewhere, ancient and new elites, both local and national, have used it as a way to secure or reinforce their grip on institutions and assets. 2) Tension between modernization and preservation. Planning has always struggled to maintain features of the existing urban environment. In the Arab region, it has long been challenged by how it can strengthen continuities in urban settlements and help these settlements to “move beyond the narrative of loss” (Elsheshtawy 2004: 1) towards becoming “modern.” 3) A connected and networked history. New scholarly accounts have recently challenged a global history often focused on north/south, east/west divides and the bounded circulations they created. A more networked approach is now providing a wider understanding of cities in the Arab region, where planning is not simply a predefined Western project imposed on or replicated in foreign spaces, but rather a set of circulating ideas and practices, constantly negotiated by local agents. Such connections and networks reflect shifting financial and political power along with shifting paradigms and directions of circulations—thus also challenging assumptions of center/periphery (Nasr and Volait 2003). 4) Planning cultures and roles of “planners.” In the Arab world as in other regions, native professionals too often remain under-recognized as local actors engaging in planning. Although most of these practitioners are not trained as planners, they act as such on the ground in ways that deserve to be part of planning history. 5) Planning and ordinary citizens. At the same time, the Arab world can challenge or even deconstruct the traditional idea of planning as a state-controlled effort to organize space. This effort is caught between, on one side, the varying strengths of private actors influencing public affairs in order to advance their claims and interests, and, on the other side, inhabitants’ and communities’ initiatives resisting, bypassing, or otherwise negotiating planning regulations and policies, questioning how standardized approaches (most coming from the West or the Gulf) are adapted to their needs and specific circumstances. These threads are interwoven across a history that can be divided into three periods, separated by two transitions, although these shifts defy any simple temporal boundaries, reflecting the diverse political settings and histories of the 22 countries currently recognized by the Arab League. The transition from colonization to independence is a first turning moment, beginning in 1922 in Egypt and finishing in 1971 in the United Arab Emirates. Second, the rise of neoliberal policies and practices, from the mid-1970s to the 1990s, opened an era that is continuing today.

Entretien avec Marcel Roncayolo. Marseille, le 4 mars 2013

Marcel Roncayolo, grand penseur de la ville, Marseillais d’origine, etait l’invite d’honneur de la journee d’etudes qui a fourni la matiere a ce numero de Rives mediterraneennes. Son regard critique sur les notions d’evenement, de culture, de metropole ou de capitale, appliquees au cas de Marseille, est riche d’enseignements. Nous reproduisons ici des extraits de cet entretien riche et passionnant, qui se deroula pendant deux heures dans l’appartement marseillais de Marcel Roncayolo.